Self-Compassion, Mindfulness, Interoception, and Motivation in Eating Disorder Treatment: A Longitudinal, Observational Study

Abstract

Eating disorders are serious and life-threatening psychiatric illnesses. Understanding factors that are related to eating disorder symptomatology is important to supporting recovery from an eating disorder. Previous research has primarily utilized community and non-clinical samples and has found a negative relationship between eating disorder symptomatology and self-compassion, mindfulness, interoception, and autonomous motivation. Additionally, research has shown a positive relationship between controlled motivation and eating disorder symptomatology. The present study examined how levels of self-compassion, mindfulness, interoception (body listening and attention regulation), and motivation relate to eating disorder symptomatology among individuals currently undergoing eating disorder treatment. The present study hypothesized that negative relationships would be identified between eating disorder symptomatology and self-compassion, mindfulness, interoception, and autonomous motivation; a positive relationship between eating disorder symptomatology and controlled motivation was also predicted in the present clinical sample. A longitudinal study was conducted over six weeks, during which participants (N = 20) received weekly emails to complete a weekly survey. Bivariate correlations suggested statistically meaningful relationships among self-compassion, mindfulness, and attention regulation in the expected direction. Within-level multilevel modeling indicated no statistically significant relationship between eating disorder symptomatology and body listening (following Bonferroni’s correction), attention regulation, or controlled motivation; there were statistically significant relationships in the three models including eating disorder symptomatology as the outcome and self-compassion, mindfulness, and autonomous motivation as individual predictors. These results are predominantly consistent with previous research in the field. The identified relationships could inform future efforts to investigate potential causal relationships between the variables.